Towards Safety. Towards Hope.

The quiet in Benjamin's house tightens around the injured survivor's bed. Jenny keeps the damp cloth on their forehead as their eyes snap open, wild and shining.

Their trembling hand lifts toward Benjamin, not for help, but to drag a secret into the room before it dies with them.

Jenny stiffens beside the bed. The old rhythm clicks into place, the pulsing light, the desperate call from the dark, it was never random.

The survivor swallows hard, eyes fixed on Benjamin as fear and relief war inside them. Somewhere outside, the house creaks, but inside, the answer finally has a face.

Benjamin leans closer, his eyes tracing the jagged, dark veins spreading from the survivor's wound toward their chest. The truth is written in the necrotic discoloration of the skin, a silent, irreversible sentence.

The room goes very still except for the faint creak of the house settling around them. Arthur waits, rigid with fear, while Jenny watches Benjamin for the call.

Benjamin exhales once, slow and thin, and pulls the bat free.

Arthur shuts his eyes hard and sets his jaw. Jenny lowers her gun a fraction, but does not look away.

Benjamin steps in close and brings the bat down in a clean, practiced arc.

The strike lands once. Arthur goes slack at once, the tension draining out of him before the room can make a sound.

Jenny flinches, then steadies herself, eyes fixed on Arthur's still form. The house seems to hold its breath around the bed.

On Arthur's chest, half-hidden until now, a folded note slips loose from his shirt and lands on the blanket. Jenny notices it at the same moment Benjamin does.

Benjamin reaches past Arthur’s still hand and lifts the folded note off the blanket. It comes free cleanly, light as scrap paper, and the quiet of the room seems to tighten around it.

He brings the note up between thumb and forefinger, turning it just enough to catch the creases. The paper is worn from being handled often, and one edge is damp where it rested against the sheet.

Jenny shifts one careful step closer from the doorway, gun still lowered but ready. Her eyes stay on Benjamin’s hands, then flick briefly to Arthur, like she expects the paper to bite.

A dark thumbprint marks one corner of the fold. Whatever Arthur meant to leave behind, he meant it for someone to find now, not later.

Benjamin eases the fold open with two careful pulls, keeping the paper flat and away from Arthur’s bloodied shirt.

A crude house sketch fills the page, then a line of hurried handwriting beneath it, crowded with arrows and a list of rooms.

One room is circled hard enough to tear the paper. Another note points to the back hall, where the watch rotation would pass.

Jenny stays at the doorway, gun steady, while Benjamin holds the note under the dim room light and traces the last line with his thumb.

The message ends mid-sentence, as if Arthur stopped writing in a hurry, and a fresh sound taps faintly from somewhere deeper in the house.